The Jan. 8 death of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani could change the balance at the top of Iran’s political establishment. Rafsanjani, who had a great influence on the Reformists and also on a large part of the conservative camp, had become an independent and moderate politician opposed to the hard-liners in recent years.
Prior to his humiliating defeat in the presidential race against hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 elections, Rafsanjani had been seen as a conservative. But after the 2005 vote, he started keeping his distance from conservatives, so that during the protests that followed Ahmadinejad’s re-election in 2009, he sided with the protesters and became a popular figure among the Reformists.